Pale Blue Dots: Iconic Images of Earth From Space

Dozens of cameras circle Earth to document the planet in detail, but few ever afford whole views of our world.

The handful of rare glimpses have demonstrated that “Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena,” wrote the late Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

Robotic probes take most photos of Earth and the moon while en route to planets, asteroids, comets and even other star systems. But the practice of taking planetary self-portraits is almost never artistically motivated.

“We generally do it to calibrate instruments and check a spacecraft’s trajectory. If you point where you think the Earth is and see it, then you’re probably where you think you are,” said planetary scientist Mark Sykes of the Planetary Science Institute.

“But now, as we continue to find other planets, these general views help us look at the Earth in new ways,” Sykes said. “They help us ask, ‘What does a habitable planet look like? What indicates a civilization is there?’”

In this gallery we cover some of the most iconic images of our pale blue dot taken by both robots and humans.

Above:

Rosetta

The European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft in 2004 to land a probe on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014.

When it swung by Earth for its third and final gravity boost on Nov. 12, 2009, Rosetta took a series of photos of the Earth. The outline of Antarctica is visible in the bottom portion of the planet.

Lunar Orbiter 1

This first-ever view of the Earth from around the moon was taken by the United States’ first Lunar Orbiter spacecraft on Aug. 23, 1966.

Four more spacecraft followed suit to help Apollo mission managers map 99 percent of the lunar surface and select potential landing sites for future manned excursions. Decades later in 2008, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project began releasing dramatically restored versions of the images (below).

Apollo Missions

Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to reach and orbit the moon. As Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders read passages from the Bible during a live broadcast on Dec. 24, 1968, NASA aired the first “earthrise” photo to the public.

The iconic “blue marble” image below — now a mainstay on iPhone home screens — was taken on Dec. 7, 1972 as Apollo 17 astronauts sped toward the moon.

Mariner 10 and Galileo

About 12 hours after Mariner 10 launched from Earth on Nov. 3, 1973, mission managers turned on its cameras and aimed them homeward. Although the moon appears close to Earth in the above photo, it is an illusion of alignment and distance. (Our lunar satellite orbits from about 239,000 miles away.)

The Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989, took a similar photo of Earth from 3.9 million miles away as it sped toward Jupiter and that planet’s moons.

Juno

It doesn’t look like much, but this view of the Earth (left) and the moon (right) clearly show the respectable distance between the two bodies. NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft took the image on Aug. 26, 2011 from 6 million miles away.

Spirit Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Global Surveyor

NASA’s Spirit Mars Exploration Rover took the above twilight shot of the Earth from the surface of Mars in 2004. Below, the Mars Global Surveyor offers a view of Earth and the moon from Martian orbit on May 8, 2003.